


Little Spider

by Mohini



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Natasha Needs a Hug, Sickfic, Things Tony will not speak of again, fair warning no smut, reasons JARVIS should not show Tony security footage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 09:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12553984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: It's not that they're afraid of her, exactly. It's more like they just prefer to keep a safe distance. A very safe distance.





	Little Spider

It’s not that they’re afraid of Natasha, exactly. It’s more like no one really wants to find out what will happen if they make her unhappy with them. Most of the time that works out fine. No one gets in her way when she’s heading for the Keurig, they keep a wide berth in the gym, and her private spaces in the tower are the only ones that are really and truly private unless you count Hulk’s containment suite, which they don’t. All of this adds up to no one having any idea what to do when JARVIS notifies the group at large that the Widow appears to be under the weather and in need of assistance in her quarters. 

Tony immediately yells “Not it,” and the sentiment is echoed by most other people in the common area. Normally, this would mean Clint would go check in on her, since he’s the only one they’re pretty sure she won’t kill on sight. But Clint is at home with his wife and kids so they’re down the only reliable option they have. Even Steve looks a little nervous when the gathered company starts eyeing him. Supersoldier and all that, maybe she won’t kill him as quickly as the rest of them. 

There’s a barely audible rustle of fabric against one of the sofas and Barnes is suddenly on his feet and moving away. “I’ve got it,” he murmurs. No one manages to find their voice before he’s gone. 

“I’m sorry, did our scary Russian assassin just say he’s off to tend to our other scary Russian assassin? And how the hell did we end up with two of those things anyway?” It’s Tony who finds control of his tongue first.

“Buck’s not Russian,” Steve counters.

“That’s the best you’ve got, Spangles?” Tony asks him.

“He’s not,” Steve repeats, glaring at Tony but clearly not having any other arguments to offer. 

~~~

Several floors away, Bucky Barnes is moving silently toward to door of Natasha’s suite. He presses the comm unit mounted at the doorframe and waits. 

“Go away,” Natasha growls through the speaker. But her voice is too ragged and soft to have much venom.

“Natka.”

The barely there click of the lock giving way is the only reply. He slips into the rooms and moves toward the sleeping space. Curled up in a tiny ball atop the bed is one red headed assassin, wrapped in a pile of blankets and absolutely pitiful looking. 

Bucky has a hand to her forehead immediately, registering the temperature as greater than 104 without even consciously thinking it through. 

“Talk to me,” he requests, slipping into Russian in an effort to keep her calm. He’s been with her in illness a lifetime ago, when she was little more than a child. He doubts much has changed. 

“Head hurts, nauseous, everything hurts, really. Can’t get warm. Can’t stop shaking. Flu, probably.”

“Taken anything?”

“Won’t stay down.”

“You’re burning up. We need to get that temp down,” he tells her.

“Don’t want to puke,” she murmurs. 

“No meds, Natka. I know, little spider, I know,” he assures her, flesh hand sweeping damp stands of hair from her forehead. “May I?”

She nods her assent, and he removes the blankets covering her and lifts her into his arms. Her head rests on his shoulder, at the place where the metal meets flesh. Anyone else he would have positioned to the other side, but when she was little more than a girl she traced the joins where the plating met and soothed herself to sleep in the cool embrace of what was more machine than man. She’s shivering uncontrollably, her breathing ragged and body both tense and weak. 

“Shhh, shhh,” he soothes softly, moving slowly and carefully through the space into the wet room. 

“JARVIS?” he calls out.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Gradual temp drop on the water, set to mist, please?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” JARVIS replies, the water coming on gently and warm enough to avoid shocking the girl in his arms. 

“I’m going to strip you down a bit,” he tells Natasha, and she nods as he sits on the floor with her, lifting her shirt over her head and easing her out of the cotton sleep shorts she’s wearing. He strips off his own outer layers as well, tossing the lot out the door to the hallway. Then he moves them under the gentle spray of water and whispers to Natasha in her native tongue, telling her to rest, to relax, that he’s got her and she just needs to trust him. She nods, eyes slipping closed as exhaustion takes her under. He sits with her in the slowly cooling spray, periodically activating the temperature sensors in his metal fingers to gauge the effect the lukewarm water is having on her fever. When she’s down to a still too warm but no longer risking hallucinations 102F, he stops the shower, wraps her in a towel, and takes her to her bed. 

She whines when he puts her down, and he grumbles that he’s just getting dry clothes, to hush and wait, he’s not leaving her alone.

Once he’s dressed, he helps her into fresh clothes as well before settling into the bed, Natasha resting once more at the seam of his flesh and metal arm, slim fingers wrapped around the cool metal forearm as it curls around her. He smiles as her thumb makes its way into her mouth, this woman child the world fears easing into sleep with her lips gently suckling away at her thumb. 

~~~

“JARVIS?” Tony asks the AI after what they’re all confident is entirely too much time passes. “Are our assassins still alive up there?”

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replies, a video feed opening up immediately. There in the middle of the bed lies one Bucky Barnes, spooning a sleeping Natasha Romanoff. 

“Is she…” Steve begins and the trails off.

“Thumb?” Sam squeaks.

“Oh. My. God.” Tony murmurs. “Turn it off, JARVIS. Turn it off now.”

When the feed goes blank, he looks at Steve and Sam with eyes wide. “We never speak of this again. I’m pretty sure they’ll both kill us if we do.”

Emphatic nodding from the others confirms that no one is interested in what happens if their Black Widow finds out they know she sucks her thumb when she sleeps. 

~~~

Natasha sleeps for hours, her fever still raging but buffered just enough by the cool metal she’s curled up against. Her slim body shakes with deep, painful coughing and Bucky pulls away just enough to cup his flesh hand and clap it down against her back to loosen the congestion in a way that he learned a lifetime ago in Brooklyn. When she gags and retches up mucus, he carries her to the toilet, wiping her face with a damp cloth and rubbing her back until she’s emptied out again. He plies her with warm tea and cool water in turns, speaking to her in Russian when her English won’t come to her.

They sit in the wet room over and over, in steam to loosen the congestion and under lukewarm sprays to lower her fever when it spikes up in turns. When JARVIS suggests they contact Dr. Banner for medication Bucky spends long minutes holding a panicked and violent Natasha tight against him while whispering that he won’t allow anyone to hurt his little spider. JARVIS doesn’t offer further suggestions after that, and somewhere deep in his files it is noted that the Widow DOES NOT like doctors. 

Somewhere around the 48 hour mark from entering her quarters, her temperature finally begins to stay down, the fever breaking fully not long after. She’s weak, achy, but coherent when it does.

“How long?” she asks him, still clinging to that metal arm the rest of the team eyes warily at best.

“I’ve been with you two days now,” he tells her. “You were out of it for a while.”

“Thank you,” she whispers, eyes closing as she descends into the first restful sleep she’s found since the fever took her. 

Behind her, Bucky closes his eyes and allows himself to sleep as well, confident that his little spider is on the mend and that the painful distance between them since Steve brought him to the tower has finally closed. 

~~~

Four days (not that Steve’s been counting, nope, nope, nope), after Bucky declared that he was going to Natasha, Steve is in his and Bucky’s shared quarters when JARVIS announces that his presence is requested in Miss Romanoff’s rooms. He all but sprints to the stairs despite the AI having delivered his message with the caveat that there is no emergency, forgoing the elevator because really, he’s a good bit faster than waiting for that thing to get to him. 

The door clicks open when he arrives and he finds Bucky on a sofa in the receiving room, Natasha lying across the length of it with her head in his lap. She’s dozing, and Bucky is stroking his flesh hand through her hair in a familiar gesture. It doesn’t escape Steve that Buck’s got Natasha in the same position he used to coax him into back before the serum, one arm extended against Natasha’s back such that he can monitor her breathing without being obvious about it. 

Natasha’s eyes open slightly at his footsteps, and she smiles at him. “Hey Steve,” she rasps out. She sounds exhausted. 

Steve stands there for several awkward seconds, trying to figure out just where he’s supposed to be sitting. The armchair feels too formal, the floor too familiar, and the other end of the sofa just plain wrong. 

“C’mere, Stevie,” Bucky tells him, silently and effortlessly lifting Natasha up to sit in his lap, shifting the pair of them down the sofa, and patting the newly empty space to his side. 

Steve does as he’s told, sitting and looking at the pair of them. Natasha extends a hand, wrapping her fingers around Steve’s and watching him with red rimmed eyes. She makes no move to lift her head from its spot on Bucky’s shoulder, though she does swivel around enough to look up towards him. It’s then that it occurs to him that not only is she clearly still recovering from being terribly ill, she’s been crying. He remembers Bucky talking about how he and Natasha had been together long, long ago. He remembers how the distance between them since HYDRA fell has worn at Bucky. Looking at them now, it’s obvious that the distance has closed.

Steve leans in close, wrapping his arms around the pair of them. “Guess I’ve got myself two scary assassins now, huh?” he whispers. 

Bucky nods solemnly and Natasha lets out a sound halfway between a wheeze and a sob. Steve murmurs in Bucky’s ear and Natasha is lifted and moved once more, handed over to Steve who cradles her close and murmurs softly to her in the Russian he’s mastered in long nights with Bucky’s flashbacks that everything is fine. If anything, it makes her cry harder. They sit there, huddled together on the sofa with Natasha wrapped in the arms of her super soldiers until she cries herself to sleep. It’s Steve this time who carries her to bed, holding her while Bucky goes and takes a shower. He can see that Bucky is reaching the point of utter exhaustion, and when he comes back to the bed, Steve tells him he’ll take watch so that they can both sleep. 

~~~

Tony’s current list of Not To Be Spoken Of is getting longer thanks to the video feed JARVIS provided upon his most recent inquiry as to where Spangles has disappeared to. One Winter Soldier/Sergeant Barnes spooned by One Captain America/Old Man while holding one Black Widow/Oh my God she’s naked. He turns to the liquor cabinet in the lab and selects a bottle of scotch before returning to his work table and doing his best to wipe that one right out of his brain. The last thing he needs is anyone turning him into a small puddle of former billionaire for having seen a woman who could probably kill him using a paperclip without her skivvies. 

“JARVIS?” he calls out.

“Sir?”

“No more video answers to anything regarding those three.”

“Yes, Sir.”

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot begin to explain what's going on here but it was a really insistent plot bunny so here you go. I have NO idea how to write Tony. Hoping I didn't mangle his voice beyond repair here.


End file.
